


Mnemosyne's Children

by LadyJanus



Series: Aftermath [4]
Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-28
Updated: 2017-09-28
Packaged: 2019-01-06 10:24:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12209352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyJanus/pseuds/LadyJanus
Summary: ... "Memory isn't infallible and if she is a Cylon, isn't it entirely possible that she would have enough information to fake her own Viper. From what I remember, Captain Thrace was one pilot that knew her bird inside out."Spoilers: To "Crossroads Part 2" ... everything from there is definitely my imagination.The fourth story in my "Aftermath" series; it is a follow-up to "Goodbye, Captain Apollo",  "Icarus' Choice" and "To Chain Thanatos".





	Mnemosyne's Children

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: All belongs to the Lords of Kobol ... the only thing that's mine is my craziness.

Mnemosyne's Children 

Laura concentrated on her breathing as she walked with her aide, Tori, towards _Galactica's_ brig. Despite a refreshing nap after Bill had left to attend his situation briefing in CIC and her undeniable happiness at the sudden, but definite up-turn in their personal relationship, her stomach still lay in uneasy truce with her body. Since her cancer's return, she knew that it wouldn't take much for it to rebel against her. Luckily there was very little left in there since her last bout of vomiting a few hours ago.

Two of her five active security personnel trailed behind them, while the head of the Presidential Security Service contingent, Major James Stephan, walked ahead.

Tori was unusually subdued this evening and Laura was grateful for the reprieve from the constant barrage of reports and incidents and emergencies that were the lot of the President of the Twelve Colonies. 

Still, it was unnerving to see Tori's continued pinched expression and generally bedraggled appearance. Until about two weeks ago, the young woman she'd hired--after her first aide, Billy, had been slaughtered in a senseless act of terrorism--had always been a consummate professional. Even in the face of the Cylon occupation of New Caprica and all the dangers inherent in being a part of the Colonial resistance, Tori had done her job with her usual cool, level-headed poise. 

Looking at her aide now, Laura realised that since the resurgence of her own health problems with the return of her cancer, she hadn't been very sympathetic towards the young woman. A month ago, she would have sat Tori down and made an effort to find out what was wrong. Instead, she'd harangued the young woman who seemed to be falling apart just when she needed her to be at her most professional.

"Tori, are you all right?" she asked quietly. To her surprise, the other woman started like a frightened doe at the sound of her voice. A visible shudder tore through Tori's thin frame, and Laura was suddenly aware of how much weight the younger woman had lost recently.

"What is it?" she demanded, concern clearing her own self-absorption like fog lifting. She stopped and pulled her aide aside.

Tori pulled herself together with a Herculean effort. "I--I'm fine Ma'am," she managed to choke out.

"Tori--"

"I'll be fine, Ma'am, I promise," the young woman said quickly; there was a flash of desperation in her eyes. "I just--I just haven't been sleeping well."

"Have you seen Dr. Cottle?" Laura asked gently.

Tori shook her head.  "I will, I promise--if it doesn't get better, I will."

Laura studied her gaunt face closely for a moment. "Make sure that you do," she said, and then nodded in assent before continuing towards the brig. It was one thing to be concerned and another to pry into her aide's personal life.

Bill was waiting with Lee, Saul Tigh and Kara's husband, Sam Anders, in the ante-chamber outside the brig. 

"I just want to see her, sir," Anders was pleading with Bill; Laura could hear the resolution in his voice. "I promise, I won't get in the way and I'll leave when you tell me to, but I just want to see her, sir."

Bill nodded. "All right," he said gruffly.

"Thank you, sir," the young man replied. Looking up, he met Tori's gaze briefly. Suddenly his face suffused crimson; Tori quickly looked away, but not before Laura saw the brief flash of pain and guilty look that ghosted over her dark face.

_ Tori and Anders! _

Laura was absolutely stunned--completely floored--as the realisation that there was something between her aide and Kara Thrace's husband sideswiped her. She wondered how long it had been going on and if this was what had been bothering the young woman.

She snapped back to her surroundings as Dr. Cottle arrived muttering something under his breath.

"Well?" Bill said with a shade of impatience.

"Well what?" the irascible doctor retorted, ubiquitous cigarette hanging from his lips. "According to my analysis, everything says that she's human and her blood samples and those X-rays you had me take are a perfect match for what we have on file for Starbuck. So far, I haven't been able to detect any abnormalities that might indicate she's a Cylon. But then again, what the hell do I know?"

Bill sighed audibly and opened the hatch, motioning for Laura to precede him. Sergeant Venner, the young marine on duty rose and snapped to attention as they filed in; a female marine stood, weapon ready, just a few metres away from the cell's bars. Suddenly the room seemed very crowded.

The sole occupant--of the same brig cell Laura herself had once occupied two and a half years ago--rose and came to attention. Kara "Starbuck"  Thrace .

"Captain Kara Thrace reporting for duty, sir," she said and then cracked a roguish grin. A moment later, the smile faltered when no one returned it. "Oh frak!" she sighed. "Look, it really is me, I promise."

The silence fell like a heavy, oppressive fog between them.

"Lee saw you die--your Viper exploded," Bill said at last. "If you really are Kara Thrace, then you'll understand that we've been tricked too many times to just take your word for it. We need to be sure."

"And you can't be sure because if I'm a Cylon, I'd know everything the real Kara Thrace knows, because it means she was a Cylon too," she said flatly.

"You see our dilemma," Bill replied.

She nodded. "All right, down to business," she said. "I need to prove that I'm Kara Thrace and that I didn't die when I went through the hyper-tunnel--and I need to prove that I've been to Earth. Okay, first I need you to get Chief Tyrol down here."

Saul Tigh's head snapped up at the request. "Why?" he demanded.

Kara made a deliberate show of sniffing the air, and then she gave that irreverent, insubordinate "Starbuck" grin she was so famous for. 

"Still pickling your liver in the Chief's rot gut, Colonel?" she goaded; Tigh bristled at the obvious dig about his alcoholism. Then her face softened with undeniable compassion. "Sorry, but you see, I know why you do it, even if you don't, sir," she said gently. Tigh stared at her in confusion and Laura thought that she saw a shadow of fear in his remaining eye.

"Anyway," Kara continued. "Number one,  Tyrol will have examined my Viper and he knows it almost better than he knows his own kid; he can tell you that it's genuine. Number two--he was the one who found the  Temple of the Five on the Eye of Jupiter planet," she said. "I need him to answer some questions. And if you get Helo down here as well, he'll tell you that I knew about the Eye long before the destruction of the Colonies; I just didn't _know_ I knew it," she chuckled. "Tell him to bring the pictures--he'll know what I mean."

"Saul," Bill said, issuing his order with that single word; he didn't look away from the young woman.

"Yes sir," the exec replied hurrying over to the brig phone.

"Hey Sammy," Kara said softly. 

"Kara--" Samuel Anders' voice broke, becoming a husky croak even on that short word.

"I'm so sorry I for everything I put you through, Sam," she said. "I promise I'll make it up to you." Anders closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

"What is a hyper-tunnel?" Bill asked.

She grinned again. "The way it's been explained to me, sir," she said brightly, "is that our FTL systems produce temporary tunnels in hyperspace and flip the ships between one point in space and another. A hyper-tunnel is like a permanently frozen tunnel of hyperspace connecting one area of normal space to another area hundreds--even thousands of light years away in which a ship can travel really fast using what's basically its sublight engines. There are natural tunnels occurring all throughout the galaxy, but there are also a lot of artificial tunnels-- _human-made_ tunnels--created by what are called miniature Bohrman Nodal singularities. The people of Earth and her colonies put them in places where there are no natural tunnels or the tunnels don't go exactly where they want them to go. The artificial ones are generally only a couple of hundred light years in length before a ship has to exit at what they call a Node, and then re-orient itself before entering the next tunnel. But the longest natural one they've mapped spans over five thousand light years."

"You've got to be _frakking_ kidding me!" Lee exploded.

Kara laughed at their incredulous expressions, but Laura got the impression that she was being entirely truthful. 

"I'm afraid not, Apollo," she said still chuckling. "The Terrans--that's what the Earthers call themselves--believe that the natural tunnels actually form a sort of organizing substructure for the galaxy, rather like a skeleton or connective tissue of an organism, if you can believe that--"

Just then the hatch opened and  Tyrol 's solid form stepped through ahead of the towering Karl "Helo" Agathon.

"Chief Tyrol reporting as ordered, sir," he said formally to his admiral. Bill nodded.

"Sir," Agathon with a sidelong glance at Kara.

Kara laughed again. "Well this is cozy," she said. "All we need now is some booze and cards."

"Chief; what can you tell me about the Viper she was flying?" Bill asked.

The young chief petty officer swallowed visibly. "Sir, I don't know how it's possible, but everything in that bird tells me that it's one of ours," he said, "even down to the Raptor gimbal in the starboard gyro control that Cally converted and installed just before Starbuck's last flight. I swear, sir, I know every ding and dent on that bird and it seems to be Starbuck's."

A heavy silence followed the Chief's pronouncement.

"I did find this in the cockpit, sir,"  Tyrol said removing a silver sphere about the size of a large marble from his pocket.

"And you brought it here?" Tigh demanded. "For the Gods' sakes, man, it could be a grenade or a bomb for all you know!"

"It's not," Kara said with mild exasperation. "It's just a music player--the equivalent of a child's toy."

"My scans show that it's solid all the way through with no moving parts or active substances,"  Tyrol explained, closing his fist around the silver sphere again. "But the metal alloy came back as unknown."

"And you couldn't find any evidence that her Viper was a duplicate?" Tigh asked.

"If it's a duplicate, then it's a damned good one, sir,"  Tyrol replied, "because I can't find any difference from what I remember of the original."

"But doesn't that itself tell you something," Laura chimed in as she watched the prisoner warily. However, she found it hard to hold on to her innate suspicion. "Memory isn't infallible and if she is a Cylon, isn't it entirely possible that she would have enough information to fake her own Viper. From what I remember, Captain  Thrace was one pilot that knew her bird inside out."

"You're right, Madam President," Kara said.

"Then we're right back where we started," Lee said in frustration.

"Helo," Bill said to the tall young man. "She says that Kara knew about the Eye of Jupiter before we got to the algae planet."

Helo pulled a couple of pictures from his pocket and handed them to Bill. "The first is a picture the Chief took of the design of the Eye mandala in the  Temple of  Five ," Helo replied. "The other is a picture of Kara's apartment back on Caprica. As you can see, she painted the same design on the wall long before we left the Colonies. When I asked Kara about it, she said she'd been doodling it since she was a little girl."

Bill handed the pictures to Laura and she could see the incredible resemblance between the designs.

"And why am I finding this out only now?" Bill rumbled--anger evident in his voice.

Helo shifted uncomfortably. "Sir, I didn't know what to make of it," he said. "It just seemed like a weird coincidence and then before I could even think about it, everything got crazy with the epidemic and the trouble with the Saggitarons. The next thing I knew, Starbuck was gone and it just didn't seem important then." Taking a breath, he met Bill's steady gaze. "I'm sorry, sir," he said apologetically.

"Chief," Kara called and the young man looked at her. "How did you find the  Temple ?"

The young man started, completely surprised by the question. 

"Well, Chief?" the admiral asked.

An uncomfortable look settled on  Tyrol 's features. "Like I said before, sir, I don't know," he said. "It was just a gut feeling. I just started walking and found it, sir."

"A gut feeling, Galen," Kara said quietly. "Or the feeling that you'd been there before? Like with your parents when you were a little boy?"

The Chief gaped at her, backing away as a horrified look came over him. 

Saul Tigh put his hand on  Tyrol 's shoulder. "You okay, Chief," he asked.

"That's impossible,"  Tyrol croaked. "My parents never left the Colonies. They died in the Cylon bombardment of Gemenon."

Kara smiled sadly. "No they didn't, Galen Covington," she said. "Your parents died along with mine over forty years ago. They died with mine and with yours, Samuel Thomas," she said looking at Anders before moving her gaze to the visibly trembling Tori. "And yours, Victoria Chandrasekar."

Tori cried out and stumbled away from Laura, who in confusion, started towards the young woman as she fell to her knees and heaved the contents of her stomach onto the floor of the brig.

The stench made Laura nauseous as Bill yanked her away from Tori. 

Lee, Helo, Stephan, Venner and the female guard raised their weapons and stepped back from Kara and the other three young people. Venner threw his service pistol to the admiral who also immediately trained it on the young people. 

"Saul, back away," Bill ordered, but the other man remained frozen, his hand still on  Tyrol 's shoulder. 

"They all died along with the parents of seventeen other children and the rest of our crew when our ship tried to navigate an old, unstable hyper-tunnel and was nearly destroyed," Kara continued, kneeling and reaching out to stroke Tori's dark head. Tori jumped up and scrambled away from her, flattening against the bulkhead as she sobbed brokenly. 

"In the end, only nine children survived in their stasis pod and only one adult," Kara said standing up again and looking directly into Saul Tigh's eyes. "He was a pilot who'd been injured before the accident and had been confined to a regeneration pod in order to heal. I remember. I was only three years old, but I remember now that I used to call him Uncle Paul."   
  



End file.
